BharatPe enters consumer payment space with rebranded postpe

Fintech firm BharatPe has forayed into consumer payments space with the rebranding of postpe app to BharatPe. The move now pits BharatPe in a direct competition with PhonePe, Google Pay and Paytm in the peer-to-peer (P2P) payments ecosystem.

The new app will allow customers to create their UPI ID through the BharatPe app and make payments to individuals as well as merchants, and also pay a host of utility bills. The company has partnered with Unity Bank to enable TPAP (third party application provider).

The new BharatPe app also offers the UPI Lite feature, that enables customers to preload online wallet and make transactions of upto Rs 500 across P2P and P2M transactions, without the need of UPI PIN.

With a registered network of over 1.3 crore (13 million) merchants, BharatPe is one of the leading players in UPI offline transactions, processing more than 370 million UPI transactions per month.

Currently, UPI ecosystem is dominated by PhonePe with more than 48% market share in overall transactions (peer-to-peer and peer-to-merchant). Google Pay and Paytm have around 37% and 8% share, respectively.

Besides the trio, a bunch of new UPI apps have also been able clock decent transactions over the past few months. For context, CRED has emerged as the fourth largest player in UPI, accompanied by Axis Bank Apps, Amazon Pay, Navi, ICICI Bank Apps, Fampay by Trio, and Kotak Mahindra Bank Apps. In July, WhatsApp Pay managed to get 11th position ahead of other notable apps such as BHIM, Groww, Slice, MobiKwik and Flipkart UPI.

Among the new players, Sachin Bansal-led Navi nearly doubled its transactions from 35 million in June to 68 million in July.

It will be interesting to see how BharatPe counters the top players. Meanwhile, NPCI’s move to put a 30% market share cap on third party apps is not going to be implemented anytime soon.